absurd
- 1Clearly opposed to reason or common sense; ridiculous or nonsensical.
The committee rejected the proposal as absurd and completely unworkable.
Critics found the plot absurd, full of events no real person would ever accept.
Similarridiculous, foolish, ludicrous, preposterous, irrational
Oppositesensible, reasonable, rational, logical
Note
The everyday sense, and the one the others are measured against. It compares both ways: absurder and absurdest stand beside more absurd and most absurd, and either pair is correct. Shakespeare pairs it with reasonless in Henry VI. Pope's Essay on Man (1734) sets it after its noun, in "phrase absurd", a poetic order. Modern use favors a linking verb: it's absurd, it sounds absurd.
- 2Having no rational or orderly connection to human life; meaningless and lacking order or value.
The novel paints human existence as fundamentally absurd, a search for meaning that finds none.
He found his office routines absurd, hours of effort that signified nothing.
Similarmeaningless, pointless, senseless, futile, purposeless
Oppositemeaningful, purposeful
Note
Here the absurdity belongs to the world rather than to an argument: an absurd universe, an absurd existence. Joseph Featherstone, writing in The New Republic in 1968, uses it for how the world must look to children. It sits between the everyday adjective and the philosopher's noun. Use it of conditions and whole lives. A silly remark calls for plain "ridiculous" instead.
- 3The conflict between the human search for meaning and the inability to find any in an irrational universe, where life holds no significance beyond existence itself.
Camus confronts the absurd by urging us to live fully without false hope.
The novel dramatizes the absurd, the gap between human longing and an indifferent world.
Note
Philosophy turns the adjective into the name of a condition, and that name nearly always carries the definite article. One speaks of the absurd, of facing or confronting the absurd, never of an absurd. The article marks it off from the obsolete noun, which counted single absurdities. Absurdism is the outlook built on this condition, and the works it inspired are described by the adjective for absurdist art.
- 4Relating to or characteristic of absurdism, the artistic movement that portrays human existence as meaningless.
Beckett's absurd plays strip away conventional plot and clear motive.
The theater festival featured several absurd works first staged in the 1950s.
Less common meanings
- 5A statement, idea, or thing that is contrary to reason; an absurdity.
The philosopher waved away the argument as an absurd unworthy of reply.
Her pamphlet was denounced from the pulpit as an absurd against scripture.
Note
A noun that has dropped out of use. Older prose could call a claim "an absurd", with the plural absurds, where modern English says an absurdity. When you meet it in reading, take it as that word. In your own writing, avoid it, because it now reads as a slip. The one place the noun survives is the philosophical term, and there it takes the.
- 6Not in harmony; dissonant or discordant in sound.
Similarinconsistent, incongruous
Note
The meaning closest to the Latin. Absurdus meant "out of tune", from ab "away from" and surdus "deaf, dull-sounding", the same surdus behind surd. A sound that jars on the ear lent its name to an idea that jars on reason, which is where the everyday "ridiculous" sense comes from. The musical use is obsolete now. For sound, say dissonant or discordant, since a modern reader will hear only "ridiculous".
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Origin
First attested in 1557, absurd came through Middle French absurde from Latin absurdus, meaning 'incongruous, dissonant, out of tune'. This was built from ab ('away from, out') plus surdus ('silent, deaf, dull-sounding').